Thurday’s foods…

as-salaam aleikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,

  ok, I need to get updated here so I don’t fall behind. I have been busying myself and then too tired to post at night…

so, on Thursday, my best friend from Abu Dhabi came down to Dubai.   Her husband had a wedding to go to so they stayed at a hotel and I decided to cook.

I cooked a healthy dish and a couple of non-healthy stuff and some white rice. I was supposed to make brown rice but I was too busy and ran out of time. 

I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch…except for the nibbles I took to taste the marinade and such I was making—so I ended up eating everything… but I didn’t over-do it so inshallah I was alright. I know its bad to skip meals but I was running around to several stores to get all the ingredients and all the preparation time…I just didn’t have any time to eat.  I also forgot to take photos!! but I have a couple of photos of the same dishes I made previously for a forum I wanted to post the recipes on…

I made  Japanese potato salad:

 

OMG this is sooo yummy.  but FATTENING!!  now, this photo, the potatoes are cubed, and they stayed cubed only because it was leftover sauteed potatoes I made the salad with. normally you boil the potatoes and I just cannot keep it in cubes. it always turns to mash, but I like the salad mashed anyways.  so basically, you peel and boil potatoes, then let cool.  slice cucumber and onion paper thin, then soak in a bowl of water with salt added.  then remove the slices and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze until you have removed as much water as you can and set aside.

once the potatoes are cold, add the cucumbers and onions, and mayo… this you go by eye, I don’t have a measured recipe for this.  keep adding mayo until its creamy enough for you, then season with salt and pepper.  YUMM!!

 

next I made Bulgogi which is a Korean beef dish:

mmmmm this one is yummy too!!  the recipe for this (afterwards I will post how to make this healthier—without sugar—but the original recipe first)

serves 4
2 lb steak, thinly sliced (easiest if you slightly freeze them first)

1/2 onion, thinly sliced

1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
2 tbsp sesame oil
1/4 tsp blk pepper
1 tsp sesame seeds
1-2 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp juice of ginger
1/2 onion, grind in a food processor

*** if you are using a cheap cut of steak add 1-2 tsp of white vinegar or rice vinegar to tenderize the meat.

after slicing the steaks and onion, set aside. Combine the rest of the ingredients in a big bowl.
Marinade beef and vegetables in this marinade for at least 30 minutes.
1-2 hours is the best, after more than several hours it will be too salty. I have never marinated it for more than an hour.
heat up a pan on a med-high to high heat and add the onions and beef  in batches, it cooks…10-20 seconds on each side at the most-and remove from pan.  you will get a lot of smoke and the marinade does burn to the pan so use a non-stick pan or else cleaning will be a pain.

If you are like my hubby and likes lots of sauce for the rice then add all the marinade sauce to a new clean pan with about half a cup of water and let the sauce boil and reduce a couple minutes. Then you can pour it over the rice oh, and garnish with fresh green onion slices. it goes well with the beef

******************************* to make this healthier:

my Korean friend where I used to work made this dish for me one day and she said she didn’t use any sugar—she used crushed pears instead.  I just don’t know how much crushed pears to use with the soy sauce so this will something to experiment around with. maybe add some crushed pairs, and put a small piece of beef in for a minute, and fry it and taste.  then add more as necessary.

It tasted just like the versions that have sugar in them.  als0, for a healthier way..perhaps chicken or shrimp instead of beef…. but ohhh its perfect with beef!!

 

I then made a healthier version of Yakitori, which are Japanese chicken skewers, with or without onions/green onions with a teriyaki marinade (similar to the bulgogi marinade actually):

this photo is for a grill that is sold for this in Japan—not mine… this dish is best grilled over charcoal but I made this on a really high heat in the oven instead.

for the skewers, its basically just cubed chicken breasts and chicken thigh meat.  you can make this with beef as well. in Japan they make it with all parts of the chicken.. the gizzards, the liver etc..    but I can’t eat those parts:

here is the recipe I used for the marinade:

Orange Teriyaki Glazed Chicken

I say its healthier because it is made with honey instead of sugar. I know most food experts will tell you honey and sugar are practically the exact same thing,  but I say honey is better than sugar, so as long as you don’t over-do it (and most of it is marinade anyways, you won’t drink the leftover marinade), I think it is healthy enough.

 

the whole dinner was yummy Mashallah… 

oh…oops… I forgot to add….. I did eat some lemon shortbread cookies that my friend served us…   bad I know but was it oh so gooooood!

my foods for today

as-salaam aleikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,

 

ok lets see for today I had:

breakfast:

a mango-banana smoothie made with skim milk.  just a whole banana, a whole mango and skim milk.  I put everything in the blender and then all the milk came pouring out the bottom.. there is a leak.. so then I got out our food processor and made it with that… well… it whipped everything up instead of just blending it like a blender would…  and that is not the texture I wanted… it was almost the consistency of soft ice cream… but I wanted it to be smoothie like…  oh well, maybe next time inshallah.  so now that I know my food processor whips up skim milk like this, I have to think of some desert ideas to make with skim milk so I can have a fake creamy desert.

 

for lunch:

a veggie stuffed pepper (or capsicum as some people call it).  I made 11 of these the night before.  I sauteed onions, zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant and mushrooms that were all cut up into small cubes—well, the mushrooms I just sliced.  I sauteed all of them seperately because with the amount of stuffed peppers I was trying to make, it would have all become one black clump of veggies—not very attractive.  I did this the first time I attempted to make them.  I sauteed everything with a dash of olive oil and some salt and pepper, and this time, some italian seasonings, and a bit of parmesan cheese (just a bit)  after all was sauteed, I put them all together in a pot, along with cooked brown rice.  I had to taste as I went because I had to add more salt since I did not cook the rice with salt.

 

then  you cut the tops of the bell peppers and boil them for about 2-3 minutes each, and remove them to a platter to cool a bit. and when they were cool enough to handle, stuffed them full of the mix I made.  I baked them for about 1 hour in the oven and served with a tomato sauce and a dollop of low-fat sour cream.

it pretty much tastes like ratatouille with rice and bell peppers.  yumm.  and very healthy as well, Alhamdulillah.

 

for dinner I had the Easy Honey Salmon for 2 that I had leftover from yesterday. it was yummylicious just like yesterday. 

 

I was still hungry a little while later so I quickly made a mini roast beef sandwich on a mini whole wheat roll:

ha ha ha ha I forgot to take a picture before eating it so there you see my first bit out of it.   and then later on I also at a couple of plums. 

 

I was a tiny bit bad tonight though as I was making a friend of mine some butter-sugar rusk and I ate 4 of them!!  ….ahhh I gotta learn to control myself.. anyhow, the rusk is made with thinly sliced Viennese baguette (its softer than the regular french baguette) brushed with melted butter, and sugar sprinkled on top. then you bake them on a high heat just to slightly toast them, then drop the heat down to 65-70C  for an hour and a half, until they are fully dried.  ohhh yummm… I can eat so many of these… but they are all going to my friend tomorrow and not in my stomach inshallah!

 

my first photo report :)

so finally I am starting my photo reporting of things relating to my weight-loss journey. and it is mostly going to be about the food LOL … because its so fun to talk about food, isn’t it?

so for breakfast today I had a banana because I woke up late and I basically ate it while preparing my lunch.

here was my yummy lunch:

Here is the recipe (its for the salmon only):

Easy Honey Salmon for 2

I tried adding a half a lemon to the orange juice called for in the recipe but I didn’t taste any of the lemon… but I just loved the sauce…I was worried about it being too much of orange in the sauce, but it really works, Mashallah.

I made whole-wheat couscous to go with this, lightly spiced with some curry powder, tumeric, salt and pepper. I also added a shirazi-style salad (diced cucumbers and tomatoes, minced onion, with some salt, pepper, and a dash of olive oil). now, this doesn’t go authentically with shirazi salad, but I threw in some chopped cilantro (or coriander) as well. the bites of salad that ended up touching the orange sauce was soooo good Mashallah.

I have the second piece of salmon that I made in this recipe and couscous waiting in the refrigerator for me for lunch tomorrow and I can’t wait!!!

for dinner I had:

this is Amy’s Black Bean Burrito—a frozen burrito. it is all organic, vegan, and deeeeelicious, Mashallah! I looooove frozen meals by Amy’s. most of them are vegan, but some do have dairy products in their other meals.

I was still wanting more to eat after the burrito so I had an apple.

my first mini-goal….

as-salaam aleikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,

I need to put down a goal, but not the total weight I want to lose, because then it will feel like its going slowly.  so here is my first goal.  to lose 25lbs, or 11.5kg  inshallah.

another goal is to eat more veggies and fruits.  since living with my in-laws here in Dubai, I don’t eat nearly as much veggies as I used to because I got spoiled and lazy about cooking.  I have been eating the home food and Gulf Arabic food just doesn’t include a lot of veggies.

I have to let not eat rice like it is the main part of the meal like they do over here.   I will have rice as a part of a balanced meal, inshallah.  and it will be wholegrain rice as well.

inshallah it goes smooth.

as-salaam aleikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,

I have been bad bad BAD about blogging!! its mainly because I haven’t 100% been doing as good as I would like and I don’t want to have to admit it…but I have to just admit it and move on to doing better inshallah.

I haven’t gotten on the treadmill yet, and I finally went grocery shopping yesterday and bought a huge load of veggies and fruits. I am going to try for a more vegetarian diet, but totally not strict or anything.

I also bought those plastic popsicle molds so I will inshallah be freezing 100% fruit juices in them as an icy treat because ice cream is one of my weaknesses so inshallah this will satisfy it enough.

I am going to get the Chalean Extreme progam like sis Muslimah on a Diet and do that and some treadmill walking for my workouts. I normally would like to do intensive cardio but since my toe is not fully healed from being fractured, I will at least be working out hard in strength training… its a start until I can full out do cardio like I would like to.

alrighty, I neeeed to go to bed so I have more motivation to workout tomorrow (on the treadmill) inshallah! if I wake up too late I lose all motivation to exercise.

ughhh I have been so lazy… here is a bit of a plan for me inshallah…

as-salaam aleikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,

I have been bad bad BAD about blogging!! its mainly because I haven’t 100% been doing as good as I would like and I don’t want to have to admit it…but I have to just admit it and move on to doing better inshallah.

I haven’t gotten on the treadmill yet, and I finally went grocery shopping yesterday and bought a huge load of veggies and fruits. I am going to try for a more vegetarian diet, but totally not strict or anything.

I also bought those plastic popsicle molds so I will inshallah be freezing 100% fruit juices in them as an icy treat because ice cream is one of my weaknesses so inshallah this will satisfy it enough.

I am going to get the Chalean Extreme progam like sis Muslimah on a Diet and do that and some treadmill walking for my workouts. I normally would like to do intensive cardio but since my toe is not fully healed from being fractured, I will at least be working out hard in strength training… its a start until I can full out do cardio like I would like to.

alrighty, I neeeed to go to bed so I have more motivation to workout tomorrow (on the treadmill) inshallah! if I wake up too late I lose all motivation to exercise.

still trying to get in that healthy mode... inshallah

when I am trying to diet, I make sure I eat plenty of calories and eat very healthy. I start with around 2200-2300 calories a day. I start like this because everyone seems to plateau at some point and I know a lot of people who start dieting with 1500-1600 calories a day. I want to be able to give myself room to drop 50-100 calories a day if I plateau (and I am giving myself room to plateau and reduce calories several times inshallah) and still feel like I am eating enough calories for myself. I have yo-yo'd up and down so many times in weight and work out on and off (workout like crazy for a time and then completely quit). my metabolism must be completely going haywire. I am able to go on these healthy kicks and exercising when there is some kind of pressure--some kind of event coming up. but once that is over I go back to being unhealthy again. and I kicked myself every single time the weight came back.

every single time I tell myself I will keep continuing the eating healthy and exercising, but once the event I lost weight for was over, I couldn't get back on track again.

and the thing is, although I was eating very healthy, I thought everything was delicious. I switched to all whole grains...whole grain bread, pasta, rice, quinoa, etc... I also was almost eating like a vegetarian, lots of veggies and fruits, tofu and beans for protein-- though I did sometimes still eat chicken breasts and salmon and other fish. when my husband and I would go out to eat, I almost always ordered salmon if it was on the menu, and asked to have it accompanied with steamed veggies with no oil or butter. and it was always still delicious.

yet, when I am not in the health mode, I never choose the healthy stuff.

it is the weekend now in Dubai (in UAE the weekends are Friday and Saturdays) so this past week I at a mix of good and bad but here is to start the weekend with eating good inshallah. I need to get back into the health kick and then let myself have meals now and then where I eat what I want. but really, when I am in the health mode, I don't even crave the bad stuff all that often.

for exercise, I will start slowly walking on the treadmill and see if I can also do some of the aerobic DVDs like Turbo Jam and Tae Bo that I have inshallah. I broke my big toe on the left foot in January and it is still a bit sore if I put pressure in it, so I have to take it slow. Incidentally, I broke the toe the night before the treadmill was delivered to me!!! I was so ready to start working out again and bam!! a broken leg on an old elliptical trainer I own fell right down hard on that toe... so we are now in April and the treadmill is still brand spankin' new LOL...but inshallah I will break it in so to speak tomorrow. I bought some very comfy padded sandles from Geox to wear for walking because I still cannot wear closed toe shoes because of the pressure they put on the toe. inshallah I will be able to fully workout with high intensity soon.